


An Academic Question

by vombas



Category: The Cyberiad - Stanislaw Lem
Genre: Academia, Fanart, Gen, Illustrated, Pen & Ink, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2811884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vombas/pseuds/vombas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>After <i>The Cyberiad</i> by Stanisław Lem, as translated into English by Michael Kandel and illustrated by Daniel Mróz.</p><p>Thanks to TW for β-reading.</p><p>Illustration also by me.</p><p>Gratuitous Electromechanical Yule Goat (see comments):<br/><img/></p></blockquote>





	An Academic Question

**Author's Note:**

  * For [molybdomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/molybdomantic/gifts).



And so it came to pass one day, that while Trurl the constructor was in his workshop, polishing his collection of worm gears and sorting them by pitch, and was just contemplating a walk to admire the stars, he was startled by a sonorous blare from without. As he opened the door, he beheld three highly-burnished figures resplendent in blazoned tabards (a stylus or above a prism argent on a field tungsten), bearing respectively a crumhorn, a halberd, and a scroll — and on some prearranged signal the first tootled, the second brandished, and the third began to declaim:

"O Accomplished Constructor Trurl! We hereby do request of thee, on the behalf of Her Most Erudite Grace, Chancellor Colofacta, that thou shalt accompany, follow, and proceed with us unto such Place as specified in Schedule I, and perform, discharge, and undertake such Tasks as she may compel!"

Trurl was much moved by this speech, and fell to his knees, crying "I trust that Her Grace is prepared to make a down-payment on my valuable time?"

A bag appeared with a metallic clink in the hand of the halberdier, and Trurl examined its contents briefly and with the aid of a small collapsible loupe before nodding, gathering his toolbox, crossing the street, and hollering for the attention of Klapaucius — for though he had no doubt that any task would be within his abilities to complete single-handed, the long journeys from sun to sun passed more quickly with a game of spin-the-electron, and besides, only a fellow constructor could provide a much-needed source of appreciation of his more elegant devices.

Klapaucius appeared at the door, holding a beaker of ion tea and frowning at the disturbance. A swift confabulation later, he too was fetching his soldering iron, slide rule, and adjustible hammer and heading with Trurl towards the ship that had brought the emissaries.

**II.**

The rocket ship at length came to rest by a narrow spire, clad all in reticulated ivorine and pierced by a helical staircase up which the two constructors were led. Behind a large desk in a chamber at the top, flanked on each side by a halberdier, and barely peeping over the assortment of tomes with which the desk, (as well as every other horizontal surface in sight) was piled high, was visible a polished scholastic biretta perched atop the crown of a head belonging (if the sign on the desk was any guide!) to HMEG Chanc. Eurixia Colofacta, Em. Prof. of Lit. Mech (Emp). The upper strata of volumes parted, revealing a short, stout figure in academic robes studded with ancylites, who peered briefly at the constructors, scrutinized a slate by her side, and spoke:

"Ours is an overfreighting of riches! The university planet of Empirical College (on which you are standing) has, for hundreds of centuries, collected, copied, borrowed, commissioned, and inherited books! Our sages, fabled for their perspicacity, toil night and day to elucidate Knowledge, and our battalions of scribes slave day and night to record it! And so we require of you a new Library suitable for such a magnificent collection."

Trurl glowered. "Do you take us for mere architects? You are prepared to drag us across the galactic disc to insult our cybernetic genius by having us play glorified bricklayers? Our talents are wasted here!" And, so saying, he headed for the stairs.

"Perhaps", interjected Colofacta, "you would be prepared to be shown the scale of the task" — here she turned behind her and clicked her fingers — "before you return home?"

At her gesture, a spry and ancient gaffer in official librarian's insignia and galvanized elbow patches emerged from behind a stack of incunables. Down the stairs, into a basement close-packed with bookshelves, through a book-strewn passage, and down more steps he went, Trurl and Klapaucius following in his wake. As they descended, the atmosphere became hotter and thicker and more oppressive, and[ Trurl's knees began to squeak.

"How far down does this blasted archive reach?", he groaned.

"Ahh!", said the gaffer, "All the way! As our forebears scrawled and scribbled, the book stacks beneath the libraries of our planet were enlarged to hold their learned thoughts, that nothing might be lost to posterity. Eventually, the tunnelers excavating a northern library with a particularly extensive collection struck through into the bottom of the vaults of a southern library that was similarly well-endowed. Since that time it's more or less been a straightforward exercise in hollowing the whole place out. And installing shelves, o'course..."

He tailed off, as his intended audience had given off listening and its members were enthusedly conferring between themselves.

**III.**

And it came to pass, having set up a _pro tem._ workshop, with two comfortable stools, large blackboards, a tidy rack of chalks, and, framed in a corner, the exorbitant contract which they had extracted (with no little effort!) from the Chancellor, that the constructors settled down to design their library. As they drew, they calculated, and as they calculated, they drew; and they requested a new storey be added to the workshop to accomodate the spare blackboards needed to contain the plans for such a prodigious edifice. The atmosphere was thick with exponentiation and flying calculus when Klapaucius tarnished with embarassment under his covering of chalk dust.

"What of the rotational period?"

And indeed, while the two had fashioned a design that would perfectly stand up to the rigors of academic scrutiny within, and the occasional heavy sandstorm without, with an aesthetic élan that would please the eye either seen up close or from afar, the scale of the construction (it could not be denied!) would have slowed the planet's spin, engendering inevitable bureaucratic nightmares for the timetablers of the College's lectures.

With a sigh, they scrubbed the blackboards, sent out for fresh chalk, and pondered.

"Could we just rearrange the books, and let people read them where they are?"

"That'd be no help, fool! — how would anyone get to the book they wanted? You saw the place, it's not like there's room for corridors! And the wear on everyone's shoes would be phenomenal!"

"If it comes to that, how are we going to rearrange the books? We don't even know what's down there!"

"Good point — how about we mechanize the problem?"

"A book-reading machine? Well, it could be done! But how many undergraduates could we reasonably dragoon into fetching and carrying the books to the machine?"

"So we need to take the machine to the book...?"

"That'd be even more work - unless..."

And they set to again, crunching numbers and humming, until by and by the squeal of chalk on blackboard was replaced with the squeak of pencil on slates, then the scratch of pen on notebook, and finally the whine of diamond stylus on copper plate, whereupon they sent for metals and glasses and stones, for silicons and carbons and borons and galliums, for pestles and mortars, for chisels and styluses, for a vacuum pump and several large grammars, and for lunch — for this designing was no light work! — and having refreshed themselves, they stretched, gathered their wits, and began the construction in earnest; cutting and drilling and filing and soldering and soldering and soldering, hunched over the benches, pausing only to consult their diagrams.

At length Trurl and Klapaucius rose, rubbed their eyes, stretched, and called for the gaffer to notify Colofacta that they were ready.

**IV.**

Colofacta eyed the small decorative glass dome that sat besides a small decorative hammer on a small decorative plinth atop a small decorative dais, in the shadow of a somewhat larger decorative microscope. Urged by Trurl and Klapaucius, she peered through the eyepiece, bringing into view a speck of a tube with rotary whatnots at both ends, articulation, and a small communications aerial protruding from a hatch at the top. A hatch at the bottom revealed a mess of tubes and wires, and — beneath another lens mounted for the purpose — a plate engraved with the names of the constructors could be seen neatly mounted on one side.

"Behold," said Trurl, "the prototype λ-bibliophage — a fully-automatic self-duplicating bookworm! It will make its home in the vaults where it will begin to burrow through books, of course reconstituting the pages behind it in order not to occasion damage to the valuable tomes. As it goes, it will read; between books it will use dust from the environment to fashion exact copies of itself, with which it will share its ever-growing knowledge. As the swarm gains in wisdom, it will identify themes within the books, and within a few months it will possess such knowledge that any information in any book that a scholar might require can be whispered directly into their ear by any one of the worms; now we may embark on a test run, if only your Grace would be so good as to apply the hammer that you see..."

  
_"Makers: Trurl and Klapaucius, constructors of distinction. No Job Too Expensive"_

The dome shattered and the bibliophage zipped away from the fragments, embedding itself immediately in the nearest volume to hand, an anthology of poetry, and gaining insights into the ways in which love resembles a star and the nature of yearning as compared to an ocean. Trurl coughed, dug the tiny machine from the pages, pulled out a small ratchet screwdriver and adjusted the bug's similevisor, and let it burrow into another book. A whirring noise emanated from within, and this time Klapaucius prised the device free, with small puffs of bluish smoke issuing from its comprehension gear train; it was struggling to understand the linear dimensions of a long division, a short circuit, a square root, and a round number. Its metaphoricator had completely burned out, and the constructors prostrated themselves and begged for an opportunity to retune their device.

Another four days, and the noise of hammering and gnashing of teeth subsided. The floor of the workshop was littered with test cards: "This card was written by Klapaucius if and only if it is not true", "This is not a sentence", "Oil My Wheels Are Grubbly", "The device the constructors the universe admires built is a royal pain in the neck", "There was a constructor called Trurl / who took a ——" this last one singed into partial illegibility by a particularly unhappy bibliophage. Trurl and Klapaucius nodded at each other, set the fecundity switch to "on" and — this time with a minimum of ceremony — made their way to the nearest entry tunnel to the library, set the bookworm down on a pile of manuscripts, and waved farewell.

**V.**

In the fullness of time, it happened that another ship landed outside the workshop of Trurl. This time only one tall figure emerged — its face bearing the marks of worry and frustration, its sleeves bearing scholastic insignia, and its ball bearings squeaking from constant pacing during the journey. The owner of the figure strode towards Trurl's door and beat such a tintamarre of blows upon it with his fists, that he aroused the attention not only of Trurl but also of Klapaucius, who emerged from his own residence to see what the commotion might be. The scholar addressed them angrily, saying:

"Your blasted bookworms are nothing but trouble!"

"May we inquire", Trurl began, "in what respect they are failing? We can assure you that every effort was —"

"They aren't failing! That's the trouble — they're _too effective_! Thanks to them we've learned that our entire careers have been preempted — often by centuries! Whatever we think of to study, a bookworm will whisper that the answer is already known! Your thrice-accursed bookworms now posess more knowledge than all the scholars of the College put together! You must switch them off before everyone leaves, and our time-hallowed ivorine towers crumble to dust!"

Trurl sighed. "Firstly", he said, "the swarm has no control center; each individual bookworm would need to be individually deactivated. And secondly, even if there were, there is no way we would provide an off-switch for every barbarian hobbledehoy who doesn't appreciate our talent to apply their ugly fists to! We take pride in our work and will not destroy our creations to gratify a blockhead like you! If you ninnyhammers are too incompetent to discover anything new, perhaps it is time for you to retire..."

**VI.**

The gaffer in the official librarian's insignia and the galvanized elbow patches unwrapped the latest book to be bequeathed to Empirical College — freshly delivered that morning, some treatise on engineering — and slotted it into the first space he could find on the crowded shelves, and went about his business. After a time a questing bibliophage zipped up and embedded itself in the book, and began to gnaw. Some time later it fell from the pages, sparked briefly, and — with a small rasping noise — ground to a halt. Further bibliophage forays into the book met with similar results, and soon there was a gritty heap of dead bookworms near the book. As word spread through the swarm that there was an unread book, the heap grew larger, until eventually the last, lonely, bibliophage dropped from the book and expired.

The absence of the bibliophagic marvels was noted, and in due course the mound of tiny synthetic carapaces was discovered, blocking one of the entrances to the archives. The gaffer was sent, ashen faced, to inform Chancellor Colofacta, who came in person to inspect the dismal scene. A search was launched for a surviving bookworm, but in vain. The remains of the inanimate bookworms were examined and found to be mangled beyond repair, and swept away for disposal.

Naturally, there was an investigation — Colofacta herself insisted — and the book was found to contain an exact description of the workings of a bibliophage. There is only so much self-knowledge that any being — even such a neatly-designed one as the bibliophage — can possess and stay in command of its faculties; and the fatal volume had caused a terminal crisis of self-awareness.

An angry letter was dispatched to Trurl, wherupon it was torn up, stamped on, screwed into a ball, and thrown out the window, to the sound of infuriated cursing as Trurl hurled imprecations upon whoever might have been presumptious enough to destroy his work. Klapaucius merely offered condolences to his friend — though the newly-arrived and heavy bag of precious metals in the corner of his room cast a certain doubt upon his sincerity in the matter.

The University, after some deliberation, and with a certain relief, concluded that rebuilding the bibliophages could be postponed until suitable funds were available.

**Author's Note:**

> After _The Cyberiad_ by Stanisław Lem, as translated into English by Michael Kandel and illustrated by Daniel Mróz.
> 
> Thanks to TW for β-reading.
> 
> Illustration also by me.
> 
> Gratuitous Electromechanical Yule Goat (see comments):  
> 


End file.
